Much-missed Max The Barber Is Back On Job After Surgery

ACROSS VOLUSIA

With a comb and scissors, Max Everitt whisks his way around another head of hair - comb and snip, comb and snip.

Jazz notes from a radio hop and skip quietly in the background as clumps of clippings gather at his feet.

Finished, he yanks the protective cloth smock off the customer and snaps it to shake loose the clinging hair.

''Well, that ought to get you back home,'' he says.

The elderly man pays the barber and heads out the door.

''See you next fall if I live long enough,'' the customer says.

Everitt smiles.

The words are filled with meaning for him. Everitt has just returned from surgery for colon cancer and is facing a round of chemotherapy to try to finish off the deadly cells that have spread to his lymph nodes.

The surgery kept him in the hospital for six days and at home for six weeks. He returned to work April 10, still weak but antsy from the inactivity.

After 27 years, Everitt, 58, is a fixture in Orange City and his regular customers missed him.

''The usual, Max. Short all the way around,'' a man says before asking about Everitt's medical problems.

''How was your experience?''

''They cut me all to pieces,'' Everitt says, matter-of-factly. ''I learned a lot of new tricks. I learned how to take care of a colostomy bag.''

Word is still getting around that Max's Barber Shop is open again. Friday, the row of red chairs along one wall was empty.

The tables stacked with fishing, hunting and golfing magazines - and National Geographic and Reader's Digest - are undisturbed.

But a steady stream of customers comes in, one or two at a time. And they make it clear to the tall, quiet barber that they are glad he's back with clippers in hand.

''Glad to have you back,'' says a man who complains about the flattop he got while Everitt was recovering.

''You got barbers and you got hair butchers,'' the man says. ''I ended up looking like a skinhead.''

A good flattop is hard to find, Everitt acknowledges.

''When they find a barber who can cut a flattop, they'll come from miles around,'' he says. ''I have them come from Lake County and Daytona for a flattop. I got a boy comes all the way from Orlando.''

As a youngster in Angola, Ind., Everitt rode a rural mail route with his grandfather. A barber shop was one of the stops.

''I used to go out there and watch Brownie cut hair. Brownie the barber. I'll never forget Brownie,'' he said.

When he was 15 or 16, Everitt began standing in front of a mirror and cropping his own hair.

Soon he began experimenting on his friends.

'' 'Course, I made some botched-up messes when I was first trying it. Believe me,'' he said.

In the Navy, he cut hair for fellow sailors for four years - 50 cents a head. After being stationed in Sanford more than three years, he returned to Indiana and plopped down $1,500 for a year's worth of professional training in Indianapolis.

''I taught the instructors a lot of little tricks about flattops and all kinds of stuff,'' he said. ''That old flattop comb. You can do a lot of artistry with it.''

The comb is a good barber's magic wand - not only for flattops, but for most haircuts. They use it to measure the hair for even cutting. Scissors are just a tool to clip off the ends of the hair.

Master barbers work the comb naturally. They make it look easy.

''It's what you do with the comb,'' Everitt said. ''Once you master that, you've pretty much got it made.''

Everitt opened his first shop in Angola and was successful from the start. In 1970, he returned to Florida for the weather and opened shop in Orange City.

He has cut a lot of hair since. But no matter how many haircuts he gives, Everitt maintains a connection to his past - those early days when he experimented with barbering by cutting his own hair in front of the mirror.